


Discussions in the Dark

by Raufnir



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Character Redemption, Ravus deserved better, possible spoilers for Prompto and Ignis' DLCs, talking things through
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 10:50:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12933675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raufnir/pseuds/Raufnir
Summary: Ravus wakes after Altissia to find himself in Zegnautus Keep. Sitting idle in the security room, he sees Ardyn bringing an unconscious and beaten Prompto through the keep towards the holding cells, and when Ardyn leaves, Ravus goes to check on him. Prompto and he discuss the past, and the events in Altissia a bit, and Ravus makes up his mind before he's ordered to see the emperor.Set in the main game timeline between Prompto falling from the train and the additional scenes that, if you play as Iggy and Gladio, you see on the security tapes.





	Discussions in the Dark

Ravus leaned back in the massive chair and put his feet irreverently on the security centre desk. Zegnautus had been evacuated, and there was no one here but Ardyn and Ravus now, and possibly the emperor himself, which made him nervous. Of course, there were the MTs, and an alarming number of rogues, but other than that, no one else.

He rested his head on the chair and sighed. His arm was hurting a lot more than normal, pulsing strangely, as though the daemonic energy that fuelled the MT technology was flaring up, swirling around him. Something was wrong.

And then he caught a flicker of movement in one of the camera views, his mismatching eyes darting to watch. It was Ardyn, carrying the unconscious body of one of the clone units from the Besithia programme. They were used as hosts for the daemons before encasing them in their armour.

He scowled, leaning forward, magnifying the view on the huge screen in front of him.

That wasn’t a clone.

He knew those clothes.

The boy had been beaten bloody, with a huge bruise on his eye-socket and a cut on the bridge of his nose, his lips puffy and swollen, blood between his teeth as his head lolled back over Ardyn’s arm.

Ravus stood to get a better look at the screen.

That was Prompto. He was sure of it.

He’d seen the photos of the kid when Luna had shown them to him. He’d nearly passed out with shock when he’d recognised the blond hair and freckles of the face of a clone, arm in arm with the Crown Prince of Lucis, but he’d held his tongue. No one, save for those in Besithia’s programme and a few other commanders of the Niflheim army, had ever seen the clones unmasked before they were entombed in their armour. There was no reason to disrupt things. Perhaps he was a sleeper agent. If Ravus had blown the whistle then, not only would whatever mission he was on be exposed, but Luna’s life might be in danger.

He’d kept tabs on the boy as he’d grown, mostly through Luna, but he’d all but forgotten him by the time they’d actually met face to face. Of course, Ravus had been much more focused on knocking Gladio down a peg or two, that high and mighty shield who thought entirely too much of his own strength and abilities, and then Noctis, the little imp responsible for Queen Sylva’s death. Without his presence, Tenebrae might have survived.

Instead it had been crippled and he’d been forced to take up a position in the Niflheim army to control the damage they inflicted on his beloved people. Although Luna would have inherited the crown, as firstborn female, he was still the Prince of Lucis, and his people needed him. For the most part the sacrifice had been worth it.

But now, watching that kid’s progress along the iron-clad corridors, towards the security room, his stomach rolled horribly. If Prompto was here, and looked like that, where was Noctis?

Ardyn entered a moment or two later, with a hissing door to announce his arrival. He nodded once at Ravus who stood, astonished, and without a word took the boy through another hatchway and down the corridor to the high-security holding cells. Watching him be tossed inside one of the cells like a sack of spare parts, Ravus’ eyes narrowed. What was Ardyn’s game this time? Without a word on his way out either, Ardyn strode away. Ravus turned his eyes to the cell doors again, watching them clank shut and wondering what the hell he should do.

He was still riddled with guilt over Altissia. Whenever he thought of the prince, he thought of fighting side by side with his elegant advisor, and then of the raging grief that had consumed him at the sight of Lunafreya’s lifeless corpse, blood seeping out of her stomach into that beautiful white dress… He had lost his way after that. Ardyn had had to drag him with him to Zegnautus. He’d fought like a pride of rabid coeurls and in the end had had to be sedated.

His stomach roiled at the memory of waking in one of the anonymous officer’s cells, spilling the watery contents of his near-empty stomach all over the grill on the floor.

“Ahh, the High Commander awakes,” that familiar, drawling baritone had sneered, and he’d pushed himself upright to see Ardyn filling the doorway. “Welcome. Or should I say, welcome back. It’s where we first fitted you with your new arm, of course.”

“Zegnautus?” he had rasped, voice thick, spitting bile. His shoulder had pulsed, the stump beneath his armour throbbing.

“Indeed. But I fear you will not be left alone for too much longer. Our guests are almost here.”

“Guests?” His hair fell forward into his eyes and he scraped it back. “What guests? What are you playing at, Ardyn?”

In answer, he had been met with one of those now-trademark smiles. The dangerous kind that never touched his eyes.

And then Ardyn had left. When Ravus had staggered to his feet, there was no sign of him in the corridor.

Making his way to the bathroom nearby, he had rinsed his face and washed the lingering acid from his mouth. Straightening, he looked at the ghost in the mirror.

Skin as pale as paper, cheekbones high and chiselled like the busts of Tenebraean princes that adorned the museums in his homeland, eerily mismatching eyes, one ice blue, the other a darker almost violet colour, thin lips, silver eyebrows permanently locked in a scowl: he took in all that, and yet he barely recognised himself. Shadows hung heavy beneath those mismatching eyes, and his lips moved, sculpting Lunafreya’s name on a silent breath that fogged the glass in the cold room.

He had lost everyone.

No matter what he had done, no matter how hard he fought, how hard he tried, he was simply not enough. He could not protect the ones he loved from death. He was all that was left.

With absolutely nothing to occupy himself, he wandered the corridors of the complex until he found his way to the security room.

And it had been from there that he had witnessed Prompto’s arrival.

With no sign of Ardyn on any of the cameras, Ravus presumed that the odious man had vanished as was his habit, and, licking his lips nervously, he approached the door to the cells. Like all officers in the army, he had been fitted with a microchip that allowed him to interface with the doors the same way the barcodes on the MT units and clones did. He required no entry codes or key cards.

Prompto lay on a bed, perfectly still on his back, and had it not been for the soft rise and fall of his chest, Ravus might have thought he was dead.

His flimsy little tank top had been tugged up to reveal his stomach and the lower half of his ribcage, and he was covered in deep, purple bruises. He looked so fragile. Ravus had grown used to seeing the hard, muscular figures of soldiers, strutting and posturing around barracks and fortresses the land over, and to see a young man, barely old enough to grow stubble by the looks of him, so battered and broken, it shook him and made something quiver and tremble in his ribcage that he had long tried to keep dormant.

Returning to the security room, he found himself a med-pack, and returned to find the boy exactly where he’d left him. He was taking a gamble, he realised, since the stimulants and fluids in there were probably made for clones and the like, but regardless whether this boy was the original, or just another lab rat, they would probably have the same effect.

As he’d predicted, and half dreaded, it only took him a few seconds to come round. The stimulants got to work in his bloodstream and he blinked. He shot upright with a cry when he found Ravus crouching beside him. And promptly clutched his ribcage and looked as though he was about to faint.

“Shh, easy,” Ravus said. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Yeah? Why should I believe a word you say?” the boy snarled.

Ravus closed his eyes and bowed his head, a heavy sensation settling in his lungs. “You have no reason to do anything of the sort,” he said, voice thick and strained. “Though I helped your friend Ignis in Altissia.”

“Fat lot of good you did,” he chuckled darkly, voice hoarse, breath wheezing. “He’s blind now, you know?” He had some fight in him yet though.

He nodded. He knew. “Before that. We… ah,” he broke off, shaking his head. “It was carnage. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do more.”

Prompto seemed to soften a little, and then he leaned his body back against the cold wall, slumping and wincing as though all his pain and exhaustion had caught up with him at once. “Your sister lost her life,” he mumbled. After a few awkward heartbeats, he added, “I’m sorry. I wish I’d met her.”

“You wrote to her,” he smiled. “You probably knew her better than a lot of people.”

Prompto’s pale face blushed behind the bruises and scrapes. “You knew about that?”

His lips tugged up into a smile he couldn’t help, like the fabric of a sweater pulled by a single loose thread. This thread of memory always made the icy High Commander Ravus Nox Fleuret smile. “I knew. She used to show them to me sometimes. She…” he paused, feeling a crack in his voice like a chasm just a few paces ahead of him as he plunged inexorably towards it. He shoved his words out, regardless. “She admired your kindness,” he said, tears brimming along the edge of his ghostly silver lashes.

Prompto smiled too. “We saw the wedding dress, back in Altissia…”

“She would have looked beautiful,” Ravus said. A cramp forming from where he’d been kneeling beside Prompto’s bed, he eased himself back onto the floor and crossed his legs. He’d not sat like that since he was a child. Somehow it felt perfectly natural.

Prompto drew his knees up slowly, carefully, taking measured breaths to control the pain. “Where… Where are we?”

“Zegnautus Keep,” Ravus answered. “How did you get here?”

“Oh man,” Prompto laughed bitterly. “Long story.”

Ravus raised an eyebrow.

It all spilled out of him in a breathless rush. “Ok, fine, long story short: Noct pushed me off a train, and I ended up in a research facility in the mountains where there were dozens of kids who looked exactly like me all stored in tanks, Besithia was there, then Aranea came and got me out, we escaped but she left to go get help and then Ardyn appeared out of nowhere and he knocked me out and… well… I just woke up.”

“Noctis pushed you off a train?”

Pain lanced across Prompto’s face. “I… I don’t think he meant to. He didn’t see Ardyn, but…”

“Ardyn plays tricks with reality, you know,” Ravus murmured. “I don’t know how he does it, but it’s just something he does. He toys with people. Prince Noctis wouldn’t have pushed you off if he’d been in his right mind.”

A watery smile flickered at the corner of Prompto’s swollen lips, but he said nothing in response.

“And Aranea was there? I thought she was in Tenebrae…”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “She… She was awesome. I couldn’t have done it without her.”

Ravus softened a little more at that. “She’s got a good heart. Hides it beneath a lot of armour, and don’t ever tell her I spoke well of her, but yes, she’s a good soul.”

“I think you’re right. About the mind games anyway. She told me that Noct was frantic about what happened… and Gladio and Ignis too. I’ve never had friends like them.” He huffed a laugh and added, “It’s all coz of Luna, you know?”

Ravus smiled again at the mention of her name, but the expression was immediately wiped from his face by the memory of holding her corpse in his arms. The expression ‘dead weight’ had always had meaning to him, ever since he’d cradled his mother’s limp and blackened body in his arms, but holding Luna, her face as peaceful as though she were asleep, though she had been cold and drenched to the skin, had driven the meaning of the phrase home to him in innumerable painful ways. “I’m glad she forged the covenant. It was all weakening her anyway,” he said. “I don’t think she could have survived another. The physical toll on her was too great.” He paused, remembering one of their last conversations. “She asked me to get the ring to Noctis, you know?”

“She did?”

“I should have said yes, but… more than anything I was afraid to touch it again. I was a fool before. I lost my arm. I paid the price for that stupidity. I didn’t want to touch it. Perhaps… Perhaps if I had, things would have ended differently.”

“No way to know now,” Prompto said.

Ravus didn’t know why he couldn’t stop talking about her, but the kid didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to welcome the distraction. “She… She convinced me, you know. She was how I came to see that helping Ignis, getting the ring to Noctis, was important. He’s the only one who can stop all the world going to shit. I know that now.”

“Is that what you’re doing here?” he asked, a tiny flame of hope kindling in his voice.

Ravus shook his head. “Ardyn,” he said, and Prompto’s brows furrowed questioningly. “He said the emperor wished to see me here. I… I don’t know why.”

They were silent for a long time, Prompto sitting with his knees up, his head tilted back to rest on the wall behind him. “What does he want?” Prompto hissed after a while.

“The emperor?” Ravus asked. “Or Ardyn?”

“Ardyn. The emperor I get. He wants the crystal, apparently, though how he expects to use it, I don’t know. It’s Ardyn I don’t understand.”

“A lifetime spent with that monster would never elucidate anything,” Ravus scoffed. “And it’s infinitely more time than I would want to spend in his company anyway.”

“Why did you do it then?”

“Do what?”

“Help them.”

That guilt seared fresh across his mind. He sighed. Now felt like as good a time as any to begin to voice his motives aloud. Cathartic. A kind of confession.

“Revenge, initially. I blamed Regis and, indirectly, Noctis for the fall of my country, and the death of my mother. Regis could have stopped, he could have taken Luna with him as his ward, but he left her behind.”

Luna had told him over and over that _she_ had let go of Regis’ hand, but still Regis should have done more. He was a king, with all the powers of Lucis behind him. And she had been just a child. Intelligent, empathetic, sweet, innocent, and just a six-damned child.

“But joining the army was the only way I knew to protect her, and my country. If I had standing, I had power. With power, I could issue commands. I could control things. I…” his right hand moved to caress the gauntlet of his MT arm, the cold metal sending a chill through his nerves. “I was wrong to aid in the attack on Lucis though. That hurt Luna too. She nearly died. I had no idea she would be there. She wasn’t supposed to be there. I was wrong.”

“Wrong because you aided in the killing of a king and his city, or wrong because you could have hurt Luna?” Prompto’s question was hot and fiery in a way Ravus was not expecting.

“Both,” he rasped. “Both. It was all wrong. It was all misguided. And in the end, it achieved _nothing_.”

“It’s not too late, you know,” Prompto said. How this boy’s voice could remain so sweet after all he’d been put through, Ravus couldn’t fathom. “They’ll be coming for me, I know they will. Aranea said the same. Come with us. Help us fight the emperor.”

“Well, well,” a familiar voice crooned, heavy footsteps ringing down the metal corridor and through the bars of the open cell door. “What’s this? A pyjama party? Talking about our _feelings_ , are we?” That rumbling laugh made Ravus’ blood run cold.

“What do you want, _Chancellor_?” Ravus snapped, pushing himself to his feet, placing himself firmly between Prompto and Ardyn.

Prompto cringed away, hiding in Ravus’ shadow.

“First I deliver young Prompto here for Noctis to recover him later, and now I bring a command to you from the emperor himself. Honestly,” he chuckled, “I feel like a lowly messenger boy!”

“The emperor? What does he want?”

“He’s ready to receive you,” he said as he waved Ravus ahead of him, adding an emphatic, “ _Now_.”

“Think about it!” Prompto yelled down the corridor after him.

Ardyn did not follow.

Prompto’s scream was cut short by the closing doors a moment later, and Ravus made his way to the emperor’s throne room where he’d been a thousand times before.

Except this time everything was different.

Everything was wrong.

His arm pulsed and throbbed, his head hurt, and as he stared at the emperor enthroned above him, he saw tendrils of black daemon essence curling around him. Ravus drew his sword. Glazed eyes rolled in the emperor’s head, the stench of insanity rolling off him. The man was stark, raving mad.

“What of the Hydrean’s Power?” he asked, his singsong voice thin and quavering, “What of my precious ring?”

Prompto’s words, Luna’s face, Ignis’ sacrifice: it all washed across his mind in a red haze, and he made his decision. No choice had ever been easier.

In defiance he stood before the emperor, fists clenched, and spoke.

“By the hand of the Oracle, they are with the King now – their _rightful_ owner.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This one shot came as an idea from a prompt on Tumblr. You can me on Tumblr @expectogladiolus, or for some original (and less frequently-posted) writing, @raufnirsramblings.
> 
> Comments and kudos greatly appreciated, but I'm just happy you read to the end if you're reading this! Thanks.


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